With the rising dominance of electronic know-how, the time is ripe to think again the character of the picture. a few say that there's now not a wonderful photo, in simple terms disembodied info (0-1) ready to be configured. For images, this means religion within the precept of an "evidential strength" – of the impossibility of doubting that the topic used to be prior to the lens – isn't any longer believable. Technologically conversing, we've arrived at some extent the place the manipulation of the picture is an ever-present chance, whilst as soon as it used to be tough, if no longer impossible.

What are the major moments within the family tree of the Western picture which would light up the current prestige of the picture? And what precisely is the placement to which we now have arrived so far as the picture is worried? those are the questions guiding the reflections during this ebook. In it we circulation, partly 1, from a research of the Greek to the Byzantine photo, from the Renaissance photo and the picture within the Enlightenment to the picture because it emerges within the commercial Revolution.

Part 2 examines key points of the picture this present day, resembling the electronic and the cinema photograph, in addition to the paintings of philosophers of the picture, together with: Roland Barthes, Walter Benjamin, Gilles Deleuze, Jean-Paul Sartre and Bernard Stiegler.